I was watching the Oprah show recently - yeah Ok I admit it I sometimes watch Oprah! But that's about all the confessions you're getting out of me today! Anyway Oprah had a piece on a actually sharp topic - freeganism. Now before you start thinking it is some type of deep sea fish let me give you this definition that I pulled from Freegan website.
"What is a Freegan? - Freegans are habitancy who employ alternative strategies for living based on petite participation in the conventional cheaper and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, public concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a community based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed."
What does this have to do with me? Well I've done a petite research into the freegan lifestyle and it's fascinating. It might not be to everyone's tastes and I admit that I find some of their techniques unappealing but whole I think it is taking the 'Buy Nothing day' to the extreme.
As I understand it the basic installation of Freeganism is to find and use food that has been discarded by supermarkets and restaurants. How do they do this? Well this is the sharp part. Freegans engage in a custom called dumpster diving. Dumpster diving is exactly what it says - diving into dumpsters and retrieving food that is still edible. It is effectively foraging for free food.
Again taken from Freegan website.
"Perhaps the most notorious freegan strategy is what is ordinarily called "urban foraging" or "dumpster diving". This technique involves rummaging through the garbage of retailers, residences, offices, and other facilities for useful goods. Despite our society's stereotypes about garbage, the goods recovered by freegans are safe, useable, clean, and in excellent or near-perfect condition, a indication of illness of a throwaway culture that encourages us to enduringly replace our older goods with newer ones"
Extreme debt requires extreme measures
If you are in extreme debt then you could do a lot worse than think adopting some of the tactics used by freegans. Before you reject this idea out of hand I want you think that a lot of the habitancy engaged in Freeganism are very educated and middle class. They have made a aware option to reject the consumerist aspects of our society. On the Oprah show there was the story of a incorporate who embraced the freegan lifestyles. One was a physician and the other and Engineer.
What I am about to say is a bit cynical and will probably get me in issue with our Freegan friends so I apologize to them in advance, but why not adopt a semi freegan lifestyle for as long as you are in debt? If you are in debt then think going freegan. What do you have to lose? I know this is an extreme lifestyle but the benefits are huge. You don't necessarily have to agree with the anti-consumerist sentiment. All you have to do is go and participate and take the free food. Think of the savings this lifestyle will allow you to make? If you are implicated about being discovered by your friends and neighbors just tell them that you are making a political statement about how community has come to be too wasteful. They will admire your principles. In fact I would go as far as to say that you will gain some kudos and have a great thing to talk about at parties.
As always the point of these articles is to help you sacrifice your debt. Freeganism is someone else way of doing it. You may start out with the aim of reducing your debt but I'm sure that after adopting the freegan lifestyle that you will come to appreciate the amount of waste that goes on in our society. The option as always is yours.
Freeganism - is it sustainable?
I see what the freegans are trying to perform and I admire them for it. As a community we waste too much all the while habitancy are dying from starvation in poorer countries. However I wonder how practical and sustainable freeganism is from a long term perspective? To be honest I don't know but the more popular it becomes and the more habitancy that adopt it as a lifestyle then the less free stuff there will be to go around. What you will have is more habitancy chasing petite free stuff. That said I do think that for the open minded among you it offers a very unique way of reducing your food expenses and in turn reducing your debt.
Would I turn Freegan?
I agree that as a community we waste too much. If freeganism can help solve that problem then I'm all for it. Would I currently turn freegan? If I'm honest I would have to say no. I know what you are thinking - I'm a bit of a hypocrite to write about becoming a freegan when I won't turn freegan myself. I agree to a point. I said that I currently wouldn't turn freegan but that is not to say if my financial situation deteriorated that I wouldn't turn freegan. If my financial situation was that extreme that I couldn't afford to put food on my table then I would come to be a freegan.
I have to admit that initially I dismissed freeganism as someone else form of misplaced tree hugging. I idea it was just rich college kids making a statement naturally because they could afford to. However the more I learn about freeganism the more I understood what the movement was driving at and I have to say as a follow I am more aware about the amount of waste in my life and as my Mom always said "waste not, want not".
Freeganism - Is This the greatest clarification to Your Debt Problems?